


Emma Cullen: Demon Hunter

by Trams



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 02:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12201678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trams/pseuds/Trams
Summary: For the Mag7Week prompt: SupernaturalA yellow eyed demon calling himself Bogue kills Emma's husband and she sets out on a journey for revenge. Returning to a life of hunting which she had thought shed left behind.or: the Supernatural mag7 au





	Emma Cullen: Demon Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> This was written to fill both the supernatural prompt and the self sufficiency prompt, in case I got another idea for the supernatural prompt, but I didn't.
> 
> You don't need any actual knowledge of the show Supernatural. I haven't watched it in years, and don't remember a whole lot. It's inspired by the show but don't follow the show's "rules" because I can't remember them.

The car had been her father’s, a black Chevy Impala which had days when it refused to run, and on other days ran perfectly with the engine practically purring. She had inherited it from her father when he died. Matt used to drive a sensible boring Volvo which worked unfailingly in rain, snow and on sweet summer nights when he had driven them to their spot in the countryside, a meadow nestled in the middle of a forest, where they had picnicked underneath a massive oak, it had been the first place they made love. She hadn’t even been able to look at the car when she left the burning remains of the house, their home. 

She had tossed the bag – a bag which had always been packed, but hidden in a corner of her closet, a bag she’d never thought she’d have to look at again, much less bring with her – in the trunk of the Impala and hightailed it out of Lawrence, hopefully to never return. Too many memories. Too much pain was forever attached to that place now, a place she had loved, a place which they had filled with love and happiness she had never dared dream of as a kid.

She had always assumed grieving a loved one – a truly loved one – would involve more crying. She hadn’t cried at the news of her father’s death, but she had chalked that up to the fact that at that point they had been estranged for almost as long as she had lived in his household. Besides her father had never inspired feelings of familial love; devotion and obedience, yes; but love? Not so much. If she had ever thought about how she would react to Matt’s death – which she had tried not to think about at all – she had expected more crying. She had cried at first, cried a lot of tears until she felt empty and there was nothing more inside of her. It was then the cold fury had gripped her heart and she had not shed one more tear.

Fury raged in her chest now, it was all she could feel. Anger was the only thing that drove her forward, the only thing motivating her to get out of bed in the morning.

She checked her phone for the first time three days after Matt’s death, while standing at a gas station somewhere in Iowa after following reports of mysterious deaths and crime scenes with a hint of sulfur in the air, faint but still there. Mostly she had messages from work, from her boss and colleagues, presumably all telling her how sorry they were, and asking about her. She deleted them without listening, but then came the messages from her brother, her thumb hovered over the button to delete it, she hesitated but in the end decided to listen to it.

“Sis, I… I heard. I’m so sorry,” Teddy said. She closed her eyes, but still no tears. “I’m so, so sorry.” There was a long pause. “Where are you? I’m in Atlanta. Do you want me to come and visit? Please call me.”

Emma had been fifteen when her father told her about Teddy. A half brother only two years younger than herself. A whole other family he’d kept a secret, and the only reason he told her was because Emma had already figured it out and confronted him. He had begged her not to tell her mother, and she hadn’t. Not because of him, no, she would have loved to be petty and told everything just to spite him, but it would have broken her mother’s heart.

She listened to Teddy’s second message.

“I called around, apparently you left Lawrence.” A long pause and she could imagine him biting his lip, a nervous habit he’d never grown out of. “Please call me. Please let me help.”

She had met Teddy a year after finding out about his existence. A brown haired fourteen year old boy who had been waiting in the booth of a diner in a small Georgia town, nervously biting his lip, but when Emma had introduced herself had smiled brightly and eagerly asked her a million questions about her life. So genuinely curious and interested and she had struggled to keep hold of her resentment of him, until all those feelings had slipped from her fingers.

A year after that he had welcomed her to his, and his mother’s home when Emma finally broke off contact with her father, and she needed a place where she could take the time to start living on her own. All she had at the time had been a false ID claiming she was 21 rather than 17; she’d always looked older than she was, had been raised to act and behave older than she was.

She knew Teddy only meant well, that he wanted to help her, it was so difficult to think he was the son of her father, but he had not been raised in her world. She couldn’t drag him into it.

Emma played the third message, left late the night before.

“Sis, please call me.” Followed by a very long pause. “Is this, is this because of what happened? What happened to me?”

Emma dropped the phone in a garbage can. She didn’t have the heart to tell him yes, because of course it had to be connected. She couldn’t think of another explanation. She had tried so hard to run and to hide, but her old life had still come back to haunt her, to remind her she would never feel happy for very long. She got back in her car after filling up, and drove off. She had to do this on her own.

~

The trail had turned west and she was close to the border to Nebraska when her chase was interrupted by reports of vampires in the area. It wasn’t really reported that it was vampires, but she knew the language used in papers when it was. She could have just carried on with her own chase, but something stopped her. Some other emotion struggling to overcome the fury in her breast. 

Her father had encouraged her to ignore her own empathy, because perhaps one day she might have to kill someone she knew, and it would be easier if she could train herself not to feel anything. She had never forgiven him for how cold he had been when he killed uncle James after he was turned and started feasting on the blood of others. As a kid she had listened to him, tried to follow his lead, but as a teen ignoring his wish for her to be emotionless had been yet another way of rebelling. However she had learned how to do it, could mask her empathy to a point where she could mostly ignore it. She just hadn’t needed to for years, not since she met Matt.

Her Matt with his piercing blue eyes, his soft brown hair, and sweet mouth which would whisper about how much he loved her into her hair. Matt who had been the most loving, kind hearted person she had ever met, and who showed her that kindness didn’t have to be a weakness. He would have wanted her to help where she could.

Her father had met Matt once. To say he hadn’t approved of him would have been an understatement. He’d thought Matt was soft, weak, a pushover. But her father had never seen the way Matt stood up for what was right, how strong and stubborn he could be when he witnessed injustice, and how strongly he felt about correcting it. Matthew had been a good man, and Emma had seen that, there were a lot of things her father ha failed to see, and in the end his opinion mattered very little to her.

Because Matt would have wanted her to – she said a strong ‘fuck you’ to the rational part of her brain that pointed out that he probably wouldn’t have wanted her to go off on this vendetta in the first place – she tracked down the vampires. Finding she could still remember many of her old skills, skills she’d picked up from her father, but even more skills she had figured out herself when she was hunting on her own.

Because the tracking part went so well, she didn’t realize quite how rusty she was until she was actually fighting the vampires and she was thrown through the air and crashed through a table.

Groaning she sat up in the middle of the wrecked table and looked over at the three vampires. Two women and one man, all of them with long dark hair, wearing jeans and tees advertising some sort of blood drive. All three of them coming towards her.

She grabbed a broken table leg and got up on her feet just as they reached her, and she pounced on one of the men. Before he could react she had stabbed the broken end of the table leg through his chest and she watched him flicker with flames consuming him, and then ash falling to the floor. The other two vampires paused.

“You thought what, because it was three to one I’d be a bit easier to kill?” Emma asked the other two.She still held the table leg in her hand. “I have some information for you two. I have a long history of taking care of myself.”

The vampires opened their mouths and hissed, before throwing themselves towards Emma. She ducked and jumped to the side, kicking the nearest one in the crotch. She had been trained for this. Had been raised to fight not just vampires, but all kinds of creatures that went bump in the night. She had been good at it too. And once she started to get a little warm her muscle memory seemed to get what was going on, and fighting came easy to her once more.

~

Afterward when all three vampires were dust, she closed the lid on the toilet in their bathroom and sat down, looking over herself for injuries. Fortunately the worst were really only the scratches she’d gotten from the splinters as she crashed through the wooden table.

She cleaned herself up and hit the road again.

~

At night she dreamed of Matt, dreamed about reaching out for him and having him snatched from her hands before she could grab him. And of yellow eyes watching her from the shadows.

~

She dealt with a ghost in a city called Ord in Nebraska. A young ghost of a woman who had died five years earlier, but was mighty pissed off at everyone in the small city. After the trail took her to South Dakota only for there to be reports coming from Colorado and she had to abruptly turn around, but not before she gave a witch in Pine Ridge a stern talking to, before  
she did something she would regret.

In Denver she almost caught up with her quarry. She found the bodies, the air still stank with the ugly smell of rotting eggs. 

~

That night in a motel on the outskirts of Denver, she dreamed of losing him, of walking into their bedroom and seeing a tall man in a black hat holding Matt by the neck and pushing him up against the wall. In her dream just like reality her feet had felt like lead and she had been unable to move. She could hear the sickening crack, sharp like a gun shot, of Matt’s neck breaking, and all she could do was watch as his body crumpled to the ground lifeless. The man, the murderer, turned towards her, a manic smile on his face, but what stood out the most were the yellow eyes that shone in the dark. And the sudden realization that she knew him.

Emma woke with a gasp, her body drenched in sweat, heart beating rapidly, and she had twisted the sheets almost thrown them off the bed with the way she had trashed in bed. She sat up, panting, and feeling sick. A name on her lips, not her husbands, no that name she had been screaming until her throat felt raw, no this was a different name, the name of the man, this being, that had taken her husband’s life.

“Bogue,” Emma whispered and shuddered. Closing her eyes tight and swallowing hard against the feeling of bile threatening to come up and out. A sour taste in her mouth. It took her a moment to realize someone was pounding at the wall next door, shouting for her to be quiet, because some people were trying to sleep.

Emma got out of bed and shut herself in the bathroom, washing up quickly before gathering her things. She’d only gotten three hours of sleep, but that would have to do. Instead she dumped her bags – the one with her clothes and things, the other one with the guns – in the car and took off again. Driving aimlessly through the night.

~

In New Mexico she hunted down a Chupacabra, and that was followed by another ghost in Tucson, this time the ghost of an old west cattle rustler.

She finally caught up with Bogue in Phoenix, after weeks on the road and her anger only growing stronger until it felt like she was going to explode.

Bogue stepped out the side door into an alley, dressed in a nice suit and hat on his head, his yellow eyes gleaming when he turned towards Emma after she called out his name. She had her revolver aimed at him, holding it steady in hands that didn’t so much as tremble, even though she was faced with the demon who took her husband’s life.

“You killed my husband,” Emma said, voice wavering a little bit with emotion. She hated him, she had disliked her father enormously, had met all manner of monsters, but never had her hatred burned so bright as it was right at this moment. This demon had not only taken her husband, but her chance of happiness, of settling down, of having a normal life.

“We had a deal, miss Cullen,” Bogue said. Voice even, he looked at the gun Emma held in her hands, a gun every demon recognized because it was capable of sending demons back to hell – like the car she had inherited the gun from her father – but Bogue didn’t look the least concerned. Emma wanted to punch him in the face, wanted to hit him over and over again until his face was nothing but a bloody mess, unrecognizable. Sending him to hell wasn’t enough, it wasn’t punishment enough. She wanted to take and take from him, the way he had taken from her.

“It said nothing about you killing Matthew,” Emma said.

“It didn’t?” Bogue said, faked surprise. “Oh. Well. My bad.”

Emma growled, and cocked the gun, all she had to do was squeeze the trigger. A sudden explosion to her left, high up in the apartment building had her whip her head to the side. Fire was exploding out of a window, and an alarm started blaring, people started screaming. Emma looked back at Bogue, or more accurately where Bogue had been standing. Lowering her head, she tilted her head back and screamed out her frustration to the sky.

~

She took out a nest of vampires just over the state line in Utah. If she was perhaps a tad more brutal than needed she didn’t think about it too much. The fury mixed with frustration now a raging torrent inside of her, and each night she dreamed of blood, feeling her own self control slip a little bit more each day. Snapping at people, getting sloppy, but she wasn’t sure she cared.

In Las Vegas she ran into a trickster by mistake. People losing money in Vegas wasn’t exactly a sign of something being wrong, she hadn’t even heard about the unusual losing streak every tourist in the city seemed to be on. The trickster however knew Emma was a hunter, so her plan to just pass through the city was derailed.

Streets went in circles making her drive around and around. When she did manage to get off one street onto another it too twisted and turned taking her all over the place, taking her everywhere except away from the city.

She grew frustrated, but it wasn’t until the streets started breaking the laws of physics that she really started to realize there was something going on, and she just hadn’t suddenly developed a terrible sense of direction.

~

“I didn’t even know you were here,” Emma muttered when she tracked down and confronted the trickster. Looking like a petite brown haired woman, though Emma knew they rarely if ever stayed in the same shape. Or maybe the two times in the past she had always run into the same trickster, and changing shape was just their personal quirk.

“I’m busy,” Emma said. The first time she had run into a trickster she had been a lot more willing to try and off it, but after two tries she was starting to think there really wasn’t a way to kill it off. In front of her the trickster flickered and turned into an old, grey-haired woman.

“Revenge, is that what you are after?” The trickster tutted. “Do you have any idea how many people I have seen destroy themselves and those around them in the name of revenge?” The trickster turned into a tall suit wearing man, with spectacles and the face of someone untrustworthy pretending to be trustworthy, an oily fake smile. The sort of person Emma presumed the trickster delighted in teaching a lesson or two too.

“I seek righteousness. But I’ll take revenge,” Emma said, raising her chin. The trickster changed shape into a black man, wearing a cowboy hat, and Emma was suddenly reminded of tales she’d heard about a legendary hunter, dressed all in black and always wearing a hat.

“You’ll chase forever,” the trickster said. “Even if you kill him the chase won’t ever end.”

She didn’t say what she thought, that she didn’t care. There was nothing left, no point in trying to live a normal life now. The way the trickster looked at her made her think she didn’t need to voice it out loud for them to figure it out. The trickster’s face morphed looking more androgynous and young, before they vanished.

~

She drove across the state line into California and chased a Wendigo in a forest before she headed to Los Angeles. There she chased down a vampire which had been snacking on young male actors.

Once the vampire was dust she found a report that made it sound like Bogue was in Sacramento. So she sped through California. She missed out on Bogue, but ran into another demon, calling himself Harp, who turned out to be a sniveling demon trying desperately to bargain with everything he had, which wasn’t much, once Emma had him captured.

“All I want to know is where Bogue is,” Emma said.

“And if I tell you, you’ll let me go?”

“Probably not,” Emma said. This took the demon back.

“Uh, but then what’s my incentive for telling you?” Harp asked. Emma lifted up a gallon filled with water.

“I’ll stop pouring holy water down your throat,” she said with a shrug.

She hadn’t even poured half of it when he sputtering shouted for her to stop.

“Rose Creek,” he panted. “He’s in Rose Creek.”

“What’s Rose Creek?”

“Tiny little ghost town southwest of here, couple of hours away. Please just let me live.”

“So that you can ruin the lives of innocent people?” Emma asked. “Let you live to kill others?” She lifted the gun, pointing it at his head. “I don’t think so.”

~

For a ghost town it was crawling with _living people_ rather than ghosts, though one could question if demons should be called people. Emma was hiding in a half ruined shed on the outskirts, the car she had left further from the town. Only a few buildings were standing along a dusty dirt street, and most of them had a wall or part of a roof missing, only a few looked entirely intact. 

Everything looked rather grey and dull in the early morning light, with the sky overcast. Through binoculars she could see two men walking up and down the street. In front of one of the buildings – Emma thought she could work out a few faded letters on the wall and guessed it might be an old hotel, or a brothel – sat four demons, two men and two women. She hadn’t spotted Bogue yet.

She put away the binoculars, made sure the gun was in the holster. She also had a rifle, along with a bag of ammunition. The rifle wouldn’t kill any demons, but the buckshots filled with rock salt would slow them down.

Making her way around the back of the town she approached unseen and could climb up a ladder to the roof. She had to make her way across the roof slowly and carefully, it was old and she had no intention of falling through it.

She laid down on her stomach near the edge, holding the rifle she aimed at the two walking demons. Waiting for them to stop, before she squeezed the trigger. The recoil made her shoulder tremble, but she squeezed the trigger again, hitting both demons who were flung back and down onto the ground with surprised gasps.

Shouts came from below, the four demons on the porch ran out into the street. Emma hit two more before they could draw their own weapons. She reloaded quickly and took the shot at the remaining two before she pulled out her revolver.

She got up on her feet before firing and took out the first two demons.

“Where’s Bogue?!” Emma shouted.

“Up there, shoot her!” A demon shouted, which didn’t at all answer Emma’s question and she shot him, hitting him in the chest she watched how he burned from the inside and turned to dust.

Bullets started flying and Emma sprinted across the roof towards the back of the building. Slipping she started to tumble towards the edge, but she was able to grab hold of an uneven roof tile, dropping the rifle and all she could do was watch it clatter down the roof and off the edge. She was still holding the colt, and she was able to put it back in the holster before she could hurriedly make her way back to the ladder.

She jumped halfway down the ladder, rolled and started sprinting. She could hear voices behind her, and the sound of guns being fired.

She crashed through an open door of a building which turned out to be the old livery stable. She skidded to a halt behind a pile of old debris from the fallen in roof. Panting she caught her breath, trying to hear the sound of footsteps over her own harsh breathing and beating heart.

She pulled the gun from the holster, leaned out from behind the pile, noted the three demons crowded in the doorway and fired. She hit the doorjamb and cursed, but the demons had all jumped back from the door.

Leaning her back to the pile again she surveyed the room, spotting a ladder to the hayloft and thinking she could probably do with the high ground she sprinted for it and clambered up it.

Once up there she realized her mistake. The floorboards where all rotting, and there were massive holes everywhere. Considering climbing down again she was interrupted when a bullet whizzed past her head, and she jumped away from the edge of the hayloft and made her way across the unstable floor.

“Come down here girlie,” one of the demons shouted. Followed by a creaking from the ladder. She made her way towards the ladder again, lifting her gun and firing at the demon trying to climb up. It fell away, burning from the inside.

Emma kicked the ladder and it fell to the ground.

She dodged two other bullets, tried firing a the demons, but missed the first time, and the second time the gun just clicked. She cursed, and backed away. Opening the chamber, and fumbling with the bullets in her bag while tuning out the demons describing the increasingly horrible things they were going to do to her when they caught her. Not that they were going to catch her, she’d make sure of that.

Closing and spinning the chamber she held the gun at the ready and rushed forward towards the edge. As soon as she could see one of the demons she fired, hitting her directly in the head, before she could feel triumphant her foot went through a floor board.

Gasping she fell forward, gun flying out of her hand. She landed on her front painfully, all breath pushed out of her and she watched the gun sail through the air and fall off the hay loft. A cold fear gripped her heart and her stomach plummeted.

She managed to pull her foot out of the hole and crawled forward so she could look over the edge, she saw the last demon pick up the gun. Her heart sinking.

“Shouldn’t be so careless with your things,” the demon said. Grinning up at her.

“Burn in hell,” Emma spat. The demon just laughed.

“Maybe one day I will again, but not today.”

Emma rolled away from the edge, cursing herself, when she spotted the coils of a rope lying on the loft, a little distance from here, by the same wall closest to the door. She got up in a crouch and saw the demon was walking towards the door.

“Boss! Hey bossman!”

Emma got up on her feet and sprinted to the rope, reaching it before the demon reached the door. Tying the end quickly, she tossed it across one of the roof beams, the noose falling down around the demon’s head.

“Wha–” the demon started.

Emma took a firm grip on the rope and jumped.

She wasn’t nearly as heavy as the demon, but gravity and the speed with which she fell helped, and the demon was pulled up off his feet, with a surprised sound, and he dropped the gun. Emma landed hard on the floor, the pain from the jolt to her shins almost making her fall over, but she gritted her teeth.

As she let go of the rope the demon crumbled to the floor in a heap. Emma hurried over and picked up the gun.

The demon looked up at her as she stood over him aiming the gun straight for his head.

“Looks like you were wrong,” Emma said. “You are going back to hell today.”

She squeezed the trigger.

Once the demon was nothing more than smoldering stuff on the ground and ash flying in the air, she left the barn. Limping slightly she made her way to the end of the street where the burnt husk of what had once been a church stood. There wasn’t much left of it except the steeple, though there was no bell in the tower.

She stood there looking up at it when she heard a gunshot. She spun around gun raised, and spotted Bogue walking towards her holding a revolver of his own.

“You again,” Bogue said. Emma felt the anger flaring up again inside of her chest. White hot fire threatening to consume her.

“You took him from me,” Emma said, feeling her voice almost breaking, but she took a deep breath. “He wasn’t a part of this world, he was innocent.” She fired, but Bogue was far away enough that the bullet missed him. 

“I did, but I think you are under the impression that–”

“Shut up!” Emma shouted. “You’ve done enough talking.”

Fire swept over his on the inside, fury burning bright and she squeezed the trigger. The first shot hitting Bogue in the chest, the second also in the chest and the third in the head. She squeezed again. The gun clicked. She cocked it and squeezed the trigger. It clicked and then heat shot out through the handle, almost burning her hand, and with a gasp she dropped it to the ground.

In front of her Bogue was burning from the inside, but unlike all other demons where it was over in the blink of an eye Bogues seemed to be combusting in slow motion. The flames starting in his legs and slowly, oh so slowly working their way up. His skin splitting apart and licks of flame made their way out of the tears. Bogue screamed at first but it morphed into a disturbing laugh. His head filled with fire, it shone through his eyes, and open mouth as he started straight at her and laughed in her face. Jets of flame escaping through his mouth, burning his tongue to ash.

Emma screamed out her fury and threw herself forward but there was an implosion as Bogue’s body crumbled into ash, and she just stumbled through a cloud of grey ashes.

She coughed and spat and spun around looking at the pile of grey dust on the ground which had been Bogue’s body. The flames inside of her still burning she stared at it.

“I did it,” she whispered. Her body was trembling, and her legs no longer wanted to carry her and she sank down on the ground. “I did it. I killed him for you.” She took a shuddering breath the fire inside of her burning out slowly, smouldering.

She raised her head and with her eyes closed screamed.

The fire burnt out, leaving her raw, empty and cold on the inside. A barren wasteland where there should be emotions, feelings, but now was empty. She tilted her head forward, letting it hang down, her fingers digging into the earth beside her. She was spent, there was nothing left.

Eventually she staggered to her feet. Picking up the revolver and holstering it. Slowly she started limping out of town. She missed the fire, missed the anger, because then at least she had felt something, now she just felt empty.

But at least Bogue was as dead as Matt, and that had to count for something.


End file.
